f^2 

COf>. 


UC-NRLF 


B    3    575    Sm 


'y^^:. 


^^r 


fei^^^^^?fA^^^^^%^'    "^- . , ' " 


LIBRARY 


University  of  California. 

GIFT    OF 


Class 


^y 


Our  Annus  Mirabilis 


CORNELIUS  BEACH  BRADLEY 


[Reprinted  from  The  University  Chronicle,  Vol.  IV,  No.  3] 


OF 


BERKELEY 

THE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

1901 


OUR  ANNUS   MIRABILIS.* 


By  Cornelius  Beach  Bradley. 


In  1667 — exactly  two  and  a  third  centuries  ago — John 
Dry  den  was  a  young  aspirant  for  the  laurel  wreath.  Like 
many  another  Englishman  of  that  day,  he  had  changed 
sides  at  the  Restoration,  and  since  then  he  had  been  rather 
anxiously  awaiting  the  arrival  of  some  fit  occasion  for  cele- 
brating the  greatness  and  goodness  of  his  new  master, 
Charles  II.  Since  Charles  was  what  he  was,  the  fit  occasion 
was  slow  in  coming;  and,  rather  than  wait  too  long,  the 
young  poet  was  fain  to  content  himself  with  a  series  of 
notable  occurrences  clustering  about  the  year  just  past, 
1666,— disasters  though  most  of  them  were, — and  to  couple 
with  his  account  of  them  such  fulsome  flattery  of  the  king 
as  the  gross  taste  of  the  time  permitted  and  encouraged. 

The  first  in  this  series  of  occurrences,  and  perhaps  the 
most  memorable  of  them  all,  was  the  Great  Plague  of  London. 
The  disease  was,  alas,  no  new  one.  From  the  sixth  century 
on  it  had  moved  westward  over  Europe,  like  a  resistless  rising 
tide,  advancing  and  retreating  in  a  series  of  tremendous 
waves,  each  gaining  on  its  predecessors,  until  high  tide  was 
reached  in  that  awful  visitation  which  in  the  fourteenth 
century  swept  Great  Britain,  destroying,  as  is  believed, 
from  one-third  to  one-half  of  the  entire  population  of  the 

*Eead  before  the  Berkeley  Club,  February  28,  1901. 


156638 


island.  The  deadly  tide  now  ebbed.  England,  the  utmost 
coast  on  which  its  waves  could  break,  was  reached  less  and 
less  frequently,  and  with  less  and  less  violence.  But 
almost  the  very  last  wave  to  reach  her  shores  was  a  decuman 
wave,  which  in  1665  spent  its  force  upon  the  capital.  This 
visitation  was  not  nearly  so  widespread,  nor  in  its  aggregate 
so  deadly,  as  that  of  three  hundred  years  before;  yet  it  was 
awful  enough  to  have  o'erfreighted  Dryden's  ode  with  woe, 
had  he  included  it  in  his  scheme.  Fortunately  then  for  his 
immediate  purpose,  as  well  as  for  England,  the  plague  had 
pretty  well  burned  itself  out  in  the  year  preceding  the  one 
he  chose  specially  to  commemorate,  and  there  was  no  need 
to  include  it.  Thus  it  was  left  for  De  Foe,  some  sixty 
years  later,  to  take  advantage  of  the  interest  and  terror 
inspired  by  the  next  approaching  wave  of  the  plague,  and 
to  exploit  in  genuine  modern  fashion  the  greatest  portent 
of  all  this  series.  His  famous  Journal  of  the  Plague  Year, 
though  written  by  one  w^ho  could  have  had  no  personal 
memory  of  the  events,  has  all  the  vividness  and  convincing 
reality  of  the  testimony  of  an  eye-witness — which  indeed  it 
purports  to  be,  and  for  which  it  has  been  repeatedly  mis- 
taken. 

The  next  event,  and  the  one  upon  which  Dryden  put  his 
chief  effort,  as  lending  itself  best  to  panegjTic  of  England 
and  of  her  new  rulers,  was  the  war  with  the  Dutch.  The 
naval  battles,  indeed,  which  he  celebrates,  though  most  stub- 
bornly fought  out  on  both  sides,  were  inconclusive.  Neither 
the  palm  of  bravery  nor  of  energy  nor  of  skill  can  be  con- 
fidently awarded  to  the  one  rather  than  to  the  other.  Nor 
was  the  immediate  advantage  overwhelmingly  on  England's 
side.  But  it  was  a  strenuous  passage  at  arras,  in  which  the 
king,  his  brother,  and  his  cousin,  Prince  Rupert,  had  borne 
themselves  not  unworthilj^;  and  that  was  foundation  enough 
for  fulsome  panegyric  and  for  depreciating  in  regular  John 
Bull  fashion  the  equally  high  spirit  of  the  foe.  What  gave 
the  matter  its  real  significance  and  whatever  valid  title  it 
had  to  a  place  in  the  Annus  Mirahilis,  was  something  other 


than  all  this,  was  something  which  neither  Dry  den  nor 
Charles  could  have  really  understood: — that  this  was  the 
second  act  in  that  long  struggle  which  Englishmen  were  to 
wage  with  their  kinsmen  and  neighbors  for  commercial 
empire; — not  merely,  as  at  that  moment,  in  the  narrow 
seas  which  separated  their  home-lands,  but  in  America,  in 
India,  and  in  the  islands  of  the  sea.  Its  beginning  was  the 
famous  Navigation  Act  of  Oliver  Cromwell;  and  its  last 
scene — if  indeed  it  be  the  last — is  now  enacting  under  our 
eyes  in  South  Africa,     But  of  this  more  anon. 

The  Great  Fire  of  London,  Dryden's  other  portent,  was 
spectacular  indeed,  and  tremendous  enough  to  those  who 
witnessed  it.  But  in  the  summing  up  of  England's  affairs, 
we  see  now  that  it  was  of  no  appreciable  weight  or  impor- 
tance; and  even  as  regards  the  city  itself,  it  was  of  lasting 
good  rather  than  harm.  It  destroyed  the  noisome  seed- 
beds of  the  plague,  and  made  possible  a  more  sanitary 
rebuilding,  to  which,  no  doubt,  London  largely  owed  her 
subsequent  immunity. 

Such  were  the  wonders  of  Dryden's  wonderful  year — 
wonders  spectacular  merely,  of  no  far-reaching  importance 
whether  in  the  physical  realm  or  in  the  moral,  at  least  so 
far  as  he  or  his  times  discerned  them.  One  matter  of  really 
great  moment  had  come,  as  we  have  seen,  a  little  too  early 
to  fall  within  the  limits  of  his  year,  and  moreover  had 
failed  to  lend  itself  to  his  immediate  purpose.  And,  shortly 
after  Dryden's  poem  appeared,  another  event  occurred,  not 
at  all  with  observation,  but  of  importance  greater  far  than 
any  of  these — transcending  even  all  else  which  happened  in 
Charles'  reign — the  appearance  of  the  Paradise  Lost,  It  was 
too  late  for  Dry  den;  and  had  it  been  in  time,  it  would  have 
lent  itself  still  less  than  the  Great  Plague  to  the  flatterer's 
use.  Better  probably  than  any  other  man  of  that  time 
Dryden  could  have  guessed  somewhat  of  its  real  power  and 
import  as  an  immortal  work  of  art.  But  even  he  could 
not  have  foreseen  how  strongly  the  thought  of  that  blind 
poet  was  to  shape  the  imagination  and  the  convictions  of 


6 

generations  of  men;  how  Milton's  imagery  should  become 
the  almost  inevitable  imagery  in  which  men  of  our  race 
must  clothe  their  thought  of  that  existence  and  of  those 
realms  and  powers  that  lie  beyond  the  veil.  Thus 
strangely  do  realities,  as  we  are  pleased  to  call  them,  and 
mere  imaginings  sometimes  change  places! 

Since  then  two  and  a  third  centuries  have  slipped  away, 
and  again  do  we  find  ourselves  in  a  cycle  of  wonders  which 
this  time  we  make  no  doubt  are  really  wonders,  and  no 
mere  commonplaces  tricked  out  in  the  hues  of  our  own 
fancies.  In  one  sense,  to  be  sure,  there  are  no  wonders. 
Each  thing  which  a  day  brings  forth  has  had  its  founda- 
tions laid  and  its  opportunity  prepared  from  of  old,  before 
there  were  suns  or  stars.  But  while  everything  thus  enters 
into  the  "one  increasing  purpose"  which  "through  the  ages 
runs,"  while  all  things  in  a  sense  are  equally  inevitable  and 
equally  necessary,  not  all  things  are  equally  impressive. 
There  are  crises  in  the  movement  when  the  agencies  emerge 
from  the  stream  of  circumstance,  and  stand  visibly  forth. 
There  are  dramatic  moments  which  really  gather  up  into 
themselves  ten  thousand  separate,  errant  impulses,  combine 
them,  and  launch  the  resultant  forth  portentous,  irresisti- 
ble. And  at  such  moments  nothing  can  avail  to  cheat  the 
human  heart  of  the  joy  of  wonder. 

Then  again,  our  centuries,  as  we  know,  are  mere  for- 
tuitous units  of  measure.  We  cannot  conceive  them  as 
having  any  vital  or  necessary  relation  whatever  to  the  great 
movement  and  destiny  of  human  affairs.  Yet  how  strange  it 
is  that,  as  we  look  back  over  the  nineteen  hundred  years  of 
our  era,  we  find  the  events  of  real  significance  and  moment 
somehow  clustering  about  these  milestones  which  we  have 
set  up  to  keep  us  from  losing  our  way!  There  is  the  first 
great  defeat  of  the  Roman  legions  under  Varus  at  the  very 
opening  of  the  count — prophetic  of  long  centuries  of  losing 
battle  for  the  old  world-order,  and  the  passing  of  the 
sceptre  to  a  race  that  should  make  the  world  new.  There 
is  Constantine  and  the  establishment  of  Christianity  at  the 


third  milestone.  There  is  the  deluge  of  northern  invasion, 
and  the  sack  of  Rome  at  the  fourth;  Theodoric  the  Goth, 
Clovis  the  Frank,  and  the  faint  glimmerings  of  a  new  order 
at  the  fifth;  Mohammed  and  Gregory  the  Great  at  the 
sixth;  Charlemagne  at  the  eighth;  King  Alfred  at  the 
ninth;  the  first  Crusade  at  the  eleventh;  King  John,  Magna 
Charta,  and  St.  Francis  at  the  twelfth;  Dante — the  "voice 
of  ten  silent  centuries" — at  the  thirteenth;  Chaucer  at  the 
fourteenth;  the  discovery  of  America  and  the  re-discovery 
of  the  world  of  classical  thought  at  the  fifteenth;  Shake- 
speare and  Queen  Elizabeth  at  the  sixteenth;  the  English 
Revolution  at  the  seventeenth;  the  French  Revolution  at 
the  eighteenth;  and,  most  striking  of  all,  the  meeting  of 
innumerable  streams  of  human  effort,  interest,  and  tendency 
within  the  last  few  years  of  our  own  time.  Nor  does  it 
seem  that  this  impression  of  the  coincidence  of  the  critical 
nodes  of  history  with  the  century  periods  can  be  wholly 
illusory,  or  the  mere  result  of  suggestion  from  our  own 
sentiment  or  fancy.  The  instances  are  too  numerous  and 
too  vital,  explain  them  how  we  will. 

In  looking  at  matters  so  immediately  at  hand  as  these 
last  we  have  not,  of  course,  the  true  perspective,  and  cannot 
surely  discern  their  importance,  absolute  or  relative.  But 
our  interest  we  cannot  withhold,  nor  can  we  suspend  our 
judgment  altogether.  We  still  must  try  to  read  them  as  we 
can.  Approaching  thus  the  events  of  recent  years,  we 
are  aware  of  a  certain  increase  and  heightening  in  all 
departments  of  human  affairs.  There  is  an  acceleration  of 
movement  and  a  crescendo  of  volume  beginning  indeed 
far  back,  but  rising  now  with  a  steepness  of  curve  which 
speaks  a  climax  at  hand.  In  the  realm  of  science  and 
the  industrial  arts — to  cite  but  a  single  example  out  of 
scores — there  is  the  advent  of  the  new  power  of  electricity, 
with  its  vast  range  of  already  demonstrated  uses,  and  its 
almost  infinite  possibilities  yet  in  store.  So  tremendous  is 
our  pace  that  it  already  seems  as  if  electricity  were  an  old- 
time  servant  of  man.     It  takes  an  effort  to  recall  that,  but 


a  score  of  years  ago,  the  force  which  drives  our  thundering 
chariots,  and  the  fire  which  kindles  our  cities  with  splendid 
illumination,  and  sets  them  like  flashing  diadems  upon  the 
brow  of  night,  was  scarcely  known  outside  the  laboratory; 
that  but  three  or  four  years  ago  Roentgen  rays  and  wireless 
telegraphy  were  things  undreamed  of.  Within  this  same 
short  period  again  what  developments  have  we  seen,  both 
sinister  and  benign,  of  the  far-reaching  power  of  human 
organization  and  combination — in  trusts  and  in  labor- 
unions,  in  the  Red  Cross  society,  the  political  boss,  and  the 
sympathetic  strike!  In  our  own  lives,  professional,  com- 
mercial, domestic,  what  quickening  of  pace,  what  fierceness 
of  competition,  what  accession  of  splendor,  of  complexity, 
of  care ;  — until  the  lives  we  ourselves  lived  in  our  boyhood 
now  seem  to  us  as  slow  and  as  far-away  as  the  days  of 
Methuselah!  There  are  few  of  my  readers,  I  imagine,  who 
do  not  remember  when  the  map  of  Africa  was  mostly  a  great 
white  blank ;  when  the  now  truculent  German  Empire  was  an 
infant  in  swaddling  clothes;  when  Italy  and  Japan  were 
still  in  the  womb  of  the  feudal  ages;  when  it  was  supposed 
that  the  far-shadowing  power  of  Russia  might  be  effectually 
"cribbed,  cabined,  and  confined"  by  turning  the  key  of  the 
door  at  Constantinople.  On  the  last  tragic  act  of  Spain's 
long  struggle  for  colonial  empire,  the  curtain  has  but  just 
fallen;  and  but  now  our  own  country,  parting  company 
with  the  traditions  and  maxims  on  which  was  nourished 
her  "youth  sublime,"  steps  jauntily  forth  into  the  race  for 
the  self-same  prize. 

But  beyond  all  this  general  deepening  of  interest  toward 
the  close  of  the  century,  there  seems  to  be  a  special  empha- 
sis laid  upon  its  very  last  year,  so  as  in  some  true  sort  to 
single  it  out,  and  to  give  it  a  far  better  right  than  Dryden's 
ever  had  to  the  title  of  Annus  Mirabilis.  I  have  no  ambi- 
tion to  wear  Dryden's  laureate  wreath, — or  even  Austin's, 
his  successor  longo  intervallo;  yet  in  more  modest  fashion 
would  I  venture  to  set  forth  the  claims  of  the  year  1900  to 
distinction . 


Among  these  claims  I  do  not  include  that  singular 
dispute,  at  once  fierce  and  whimsical,  which  ushered  it  in, 
and  which  raged  all  the  way  from  peasant  to  pope,  and 
mayhap  still  lives— the  dispute  as  to  which  century  it  is  to 
which  the  year  rightfully  belongs.  Indeed,  I  should  not  be 
at  all  surprised  if  some  of  my  readers  were  ready  at  this 
moment  to  take  up  the  cudgels  on  one  side  or  the  other  of  this 
famous  controversy .  But  against  all  such  I  record  my  veto . 
A  truce  to  all  such  untimely  quarrels !  It  is  enough  that  it 
was  a  year  of  stirring  movement  and  world-wide  surprise, 
at  the  end  of— and  fit  to  stand  in  either  enumeration  at  the 
end  of— a  century  more  surprising  and  more  stirring,  per- 
haps, than  any  other  that  can  be  named. 

In  the  interest  still  of  peace,  though  the  matter  is  of 
graver  import,  I  shall  lay  no  special  stress  upon  a  circum- 
stance which  connects  our  year  significantly  with  Dry  den's; 
namely,  the  appearance  of  the  plague  once  more  in  England 
and  Scotland,  to  say  nothing  of  places  nearer  at  hand.* 
The  plague  had  not  visited  England  since  Dryden's  time, 
nor  any  part  of  western  Europe  since  1722.  Its  steadily 
diminishing  area  and  destructiveness  induced  the  hope  that 
the  force  of  this  the  deadliest  of  all  epidemics  was  really 
spent.  But  such  is  found  to  be  by  no  means  the  case. 
And,  though  we  have  reason  to  think  that  the  improved 
medical  skill  of  our  day  and  improved  sanitary  science  may 
defend  civilized  peoples  from  such  horrors  as  once  were 
common,  it  is  well  not  to  be  too  confident,  and  to  bear  in 
mind  the  lessons  all  too  easily  forgotten  of  the  plague-scare 
of  the  year  1900. 

Among  the  other  things  which  combine  to  make  the 
year  really  memorable  there  stands  out.  first  of  all,  the 
South  African  war,  the  main  movement  and  brunt  of  which 
fell  within  the  year,  although  its  beginning  was  earlier  and 
its  end  is  not  yet.  The  chief  dramatic  and  spectacular 
interest  of  that  war  lay,  of  course,  in  the  heroic  and  amaz- 

*An  angry  discussion  is  still  going  on  (Feb.,  1901)  as  to  whether  the 
plague  did  or  did  not  appear  in  San  Francisco  during  the  year  1900. 


10 

ingly  effective  defense,  raaiutained  single-handed  and  for 
so  long,  by  a  few  simple,  rural  folk  against  the  whole 
available  power  of  the  richest  and  strongest  nation  in  the 
world.  This  interest  the  conflict  always  will  have,  no 
matter  what  may  be  thought  of  the  merits  of  the  question 
at  issue.  But  this  is  not  all.  Whatever  may  be  its  final 
outcome,  it  seems  certain  that  this  war  is  the  last  and  most 
tremendous  act  in  that  long  drama  of  strife  for  commercial 
and  colonial  advantage  between  English  and  Dutch,  the 
beginnings  of  which  date  back,  as  we  have  seen,  to  Crom- 
well and  Charles — so  strangely  and  indivisibly  are  things 
far  and  near  bound  up  in  the  same  bundle  of  fate!  The 
last  act  this  surely  must  be,  because  at  home  the  Dutch  have 
long  since  withdrawn  from  the  "swagger  set"  of  Europe, 
and  are  there  secure  in  their  lowliness  and  the  consequent 
protection  of  their  stronger  neighbors.  The  few  colonial 
interests  they  still  retain  are  probablj'^  safe  under  the  same 
guarantee.  And  nowhere  more  in  the  world  can  there  be 
found  a  detached  mass  of  Dutch  folk  so  circumstanced  as 
to  tempt  or  to  provoke  attack. 

The  war  is  memorable  again  from  yet  another  point  of 
view.  Quite  up  to  within  our  own  life-time  Africa  has 
been  almost  the  only  remaining  exemplar  and  stronghold  of  a 
world-order  that  dates  back  far  beyond  the  dawn  of  history. 
Throughout  the  w^hole  continent,  with  the  exception  of 
Egypt  and  an  intermittent  fringe  of  areas  along  her  coast, 
there  flourished  in  all  its  fierce  glory  the  great  Mammalian 
Age, — in  its  characters  and  marks  essentially  the  same  as 
that  whose  records  are  elsewhere  read  in  the  rocks,  and 
which  in  Europe,  Asia,  and  America  passed  away  untold 
centuries  ago  before  the  rising  power  and  competition  of 
man.  Within  the  remembrance  of  the  youngest  of  us  the 
elephant  and  the  rhinoceros  roamed  over  the  plains  of 
Africa,  or  crashed  their  way  through  her  trackless  jungles. 
The  hippopotamus  and  the  crocodile  swam  her  rivers. 
Apes,  baboons,  and  gorillas  peopled  the  tree-tops.  Count- 
less herds  of  wild  cattle,  camelopards,  deer,  and  gazelles 


11 

ranged  over  the  veldt  or  browsed  in  the  thickets,  furnishing 
food  to  jackals,  hyenas,  leopards,  and  to  the  lion,  king  and 
master  of  them  all.  In  the  midst  of  all  this  fierce  and 
teeming  life,  himself  a  part  of  it,  hunting  and  hunted, 
fiercer  and  wilder  than  any,  lived  also  man,  not  yet  so  far 
emerged  as  to  master  and  subdue  it,  or  to  subdue  and 
master  himself. 

"  Dragons  of  the  prime, 

That  tare  each  other  in  their  slime, 
Were  mellow  music  matched  with  him ! ' ' 

How  much  longer  this  state  of  affairs  might  have  lasted  we 
know  not,  had  it  not  everywhere  been  broken  in  upon  and 
disturbed  by  the  modern  spirit  of  adventure,  by  exploitation 
of  all  sorts  in  the  interest  of  commercialism  armed  with 
modern  resources  and  weapons,  and  by  the  eager  competi- 
tion of  European  powers.  Against  this  invasion  and 
transformation  the  Boers  deliberately  set  themselves,  when 
they  sullenl}^  harnessed  their  ox-teams,  and  turned  their 
backs  forever,  as  they  hoped,  on  the  new  order  of  things 
and  on  the  English  as  its  chief  exponents.  Profiting  by 
the  added  power  and  resource  which  the  touch  of  civilization 
had  given  them,  they  would  preserve  that  savage  age,  that 
old-world  order,  for  themselves  intact,  or  at  least  no  further 
modified  than  the  conditions  of  their  own  life  rendered 
inevitable.  Thus  they  became  an  effective  and  organized 
barrier  directly  in  the  way  of  the  march  of  the  new  order  of 
things.  They  became,  in  fact,  the  onhj  effective  barrier; 
for  forests,  mountains,  rivers,  deserts,  disease,  and  savage 
man  himself  offer  but  slight  resistance  to  the  determined 
onset  of  civilization.  But  this  barrier  was  quite  of  another 
sort,  as  the  event  has  proved.  And  now  that  it  too  has  gone 
down  in  ruin  before  the  ever-rising  tide,  we  cannot  but 
lament  the  destruction  of  that  brave  and  steadfast,  though 
misguided,  folk,  who  flung  themselves  thus  in  the  pathway 
of  fate.  We  cannot  but  denounce  the  unholy  greed  and 
chicane  which  at  last  precipitated  the  conflict.  We  cannot 
but  wish  that  some  kindlier  way  had  been  found  to  change 


12 

the  settled  resolution  of  those  men.  But  as  long  as  the 
resolution  held,  sooner  or  later,  with  pretext  or  without  it, 
the  conflict  was  inevitable;  and  of  the  conflict  there  could 
be  but  one  issue.  No  human  barrier  can  stand  against 
such  an  ever-rising  tide; — nor  ought  we  to  wish  it  to 
stand.  It  was  in  the  order  of  nature  that  it  should  give 
way.  So  viewing  the  matter,  I  doubt  not  that  the  South 
African  war,  hateful  as  indeed  it  is,  will  finally  take  its 
place  as  one  of  the  most  dramatic  and  conspicuous  crises  in 
the  fading  away  of  the  old  order  from  the  last  quarter  of 
the  globe,  and  the  incoming  of  the  new. 

Yet  "Woe  unto  the  world  because  of  offences,"  says  the 
good  book,  "for  it  must  needs  be  that  offences  come.  But 
woe  to  that  man  by  whom  the  offence  eometh!"  The  war 
into  which  England  so  jauntily  entered  has  proved  to  be 
one  of  the  most  serious  crises  in  all  her  recent  career.  It 
had  not  progressed  far  before  it  became  apparent  that  her 
prestige  in  the  face  of  the  world  was  at  stake,  and  after  that 
her  empire  itself.  With  unflinching  determination  and 
superb  hauteur  she  addressed  herself  to  meet  the  emergency. 
Such  a  magnificent  single  exhibition  of  power  I  doubt 
whether  the  world  has  ever  seen.  To  wipe  out  the  disasters 
and  blunders  of  the  opening  campaign,  she  sent  270,000 
fighting  men  to  the  antipodes,  with  the  most  distinguished 
of  all  her  soldiers  to  lead  them;  and  there  they  are  still 
engaged.  Five  hundred  millions  of  treasure  spent,  not 
counting  that  which  war  has  destroyed;  seventy  thousand 
of  her  sons  killed,  wounded,  dead  of  disease,  or  invalided 
home; — and  all  as  yet  unavailing  either  to  hold  in  security 
the  territory  overrun,  or  to  defend  from  invasion  Cape 
Colony  itself.  The  tremendous  strain  of  the  effort  is  seen 
in  the  nervousness  of  the  English  public,  its  lack  of  com- 
posure in  the  face  of  trifling  reverses,  its  hysterical  welcome 
of  returning  troops,  its  threats  of  stern  reckoning  some  day 
with  those  who  have  brought  England  to  such  a  pass;  it  is 
seen  in  the  unexampled  and  anxious  alacrity  with  which 
England's    daughters    have    hastened   to   strengthen    her 


13 

hands.  Not  victorious  yet  is  she,  but  never  so  splendid 
and  so  terrible  as  in  this  her  hour  of  supreme  effort  and 
supreme  need.  And  what  if  it  should  turn  out,  as  indeed 
it  may,  that  this  is  in  very  truth  her  supreme  effort?  What 
if,  when  the  subjugation  is  complete,  it  should  mark  the 
very  turning-point  in  England's  career?  Outside  of  her 
own  family  England  is  nowhere  beloved  in  the  world .  Not 
merely  her  pride — her  very  success  has  gained  her  enemies 
on  every  hand.  She  still  keeps  her  place  in  the  lead,  but 
with  visibly  greater  effort  and  with  sharper  competition. 
What  if  the  legacies  of  bitterness  and  hate  growing  out  of 
this  very  war,  the  added  jealousies  and  complications  on  the 
part  of  her  neighbors,  the  lasting  strain  of  reorganization 
and  control  should  together  suffice  to  turn  the  trembling  bal- 
ance slowly  against  her?  What  if  Africa  should  be,  as  has 
been  prophesied,  the  grave  of  the  British  Empire?  Absif 
omen!  Yet  such  things  have  been.  Should  it  be  so, — 
should  the  future  historian  point  to  this  very  year  1900  as 
the  climax  of  England's  power  and  the  beginning  of  her 
decline,  then  would  it  be  an  Annus  MiraMlis  indeed. 

On  these  last  lines  the  ink  was  not  dry  when  tidings 
from  across  the  ocean  made  it  seem  as  if  Death  himself  had 
set  his  seal  upon  the  distinctions  of  the  year  by  making  it 
the  last  of  the  longest  and  most  memorable  reign  in  the 
annals  of  England, — perhaps  the  most  memorable  in  the 
annals  of  the  world.  Though  the  physical  life  of  the  great 
queen  outlasted  by  some  brief  days  the  wonderful  century 
with  which  she  was  so  signally  identified,  and  the  wonder- 
ful year  of  its  close,  yet  the  century  was  for  her  the  real 
terminus.  Her  last  public  act  was  to  welcome  home,  doubt- 
less from  his  last  campaign,  the  great  soldier  who  on  the 
stricken  fields  of  two  continents  had  led  to  victory  her  "far- 
flung  battle  line;" — and  so  soon  it  was  his  duty  to  lead  the 
solemn  funeral  pomp  which  bore  her  away  to  the  tomb! 
Fifty  years  before,  while  her  reign  was  still  young, 
Wellington  was  laid  to  rest — 


14 

"in  streaming  London's  central  roar, 
Where  the  sound  of  those  he  wrought  for 
And  the  feet  of  tliose  he  fought  for 
Echo  round  his  tomb  forevermore." 

And  fifty  years  before  that  was  Nelson.     "O  eloquent,  just, 
and  mighty  Death ! " 

While  one  ancient  order  is  passing  awaj'  in  Africa, 
another  less  ancient  to  be  sure,  but  of  far  greater  human 
interest,  is  passing  away  in  China.  In  Africa  it  was  the  oldest 
biological  order  anywhere  extant  on  so  grand  a  scale;  in 
China,  the  oldest  organized  civilization  that  yet  survives  in 
the  world .  In  outward  features  the  Chinese  Empire  belongs 
to  the  same  old-world  order  as  did  AssjTia  or  Persia  or 
Babylon.  It  is  the  same  huge  aggregation  of  loosely-coher- 
ent provinces  ruled  by  great  satraps  or  viceroys  in  very 
uncertain  dependence  upon  the  central  power.  There  is  the 
same  Babel  of  tongues,  even  though  the  tongues  be  closely 
related.  There  is  the  same  absence  of  national  feeling, 
national  ideals,  and  national  loyalty.  There  is  the  same 
eternal  dominance  of  intrigue  as  the  prime  motive  force  in 
civil  life  and  government.  On  the  other  hand,  China  is 
singularly  unlike  all  those  in  its  strong  unity  of  stock  or 
race,  and  in  its  remarkable  identity  throughout  in  traditions, 
in  prepossessions,  and  especially  in  literature,  in  ideals  of 
life  and  character,  and  in  habits  of  thought  and  action. 
Not  only  so;  this  remarkable  unity  has  survived  conquests 
and  changes  of  dynasty,  and  is,  no  doubt,  in  part  the  cause, 
and  in  part  the  effect  of  the  surprising  endurance  of  the 
Chinese  order,  while  all  others  of  its  type  have  passed 
away.  China  and  Africa  have  thus  become,  though  in 
different  senses,  the  two  remaining  strongholds  of  the  past 
in  a  world  which  is  elsewhere  new.  By  her  vast  mass  and 
inertia,  as  well  as  by  her  lodged  and  settled  hatred  of  inno- 
vation, China,  like  Africa,  has  found  herself  directly  in  the 
way  of  the  modern  movement  and  idea — a  huge  sand-bank 
sapped  by  the  waves  of  an  ever-rising  tide.  Because  of  the 
special  lines  on  which  early  European  trade  was  developed, 


15 

because  of  the  higher  rank  of  her  productions,  and  because 
she  was  a  definite  organization,  China  was  brought  earlier 
than  Africa  into  the  stress  of  conflict  and  struggle.  The 
first  note  of  it  was  sounded  in  the  advent  of  the  Portuguese 
nearly  tour  centuries  ago.  The  acute  stage  was  reached 
nearly  a  hundred  years  ago  when  an  English  embassador  at 
Pekin  was  driven  forth  with  contumely,  for  refusing  to 
acknowledge  that  his  sovereign  was  a  vassal  of  the  Emperor 
of  China.  And  now  at  the  century's  close  has  come  the 
catastrophe  with  a  crash  that  has  shaken  the  world.  It 
seems  more  than  a  striking  coincidence  that  here  too  the 
precise  point  of  rupture  was  the  right  of  embassy.  It  is 
rather  another  startling  result  and  token  of  the  profound 
isolation  of  the  Chinese  system  from  the  thoughts  and  ideas 
of  the  great  world  about  it.  It  is  another  striking  demon- 
stration of  the  irrepressible  conflict  between  it  and  that 
instinct  of  modern  civilization  which  everywhere,  and  as  its 
first  condition,  demands  freedom  of  intercourse  and  of 
movement. 

The  appalling  events  of  the  great  outbreak  of  1900,  and 
the  yet  more  appalling  events  which  have  followed  in  its 
train,  there  is  surely  no  need  to  recount  here.  And  of 
these  also  the  end  is  not  yet,  nor  can  the  keenest  vision 
discern  what  the  precise  outcome  shall  be.  But  that  it  is 
the  catastrophe  which  we  are  contemplating,  and  not 
merely  some  passing  accident,  few  any  longer  doubt.  Few 
now  have  any  lingering  thought  that  the  outcome  may  be 
the  reestablishment  of  the  old  order.  Whatever  form 
reconstruction  may  take,  we  may  be  sure  that  the  new  order 
of  ideas,  and  not  the  old,  will  rule  it. 

In  this  connection  I  cannot  forbear  to  speak  of  a  ten- 
dency of  feeling  and  of  utterance  in  our  midst,  which  has 
of  late  been  greatly  accentuated,  and  which  to  some  at  least 
is  a  matter  of  great  surprise,  if  not  of  grave  concern.  "My 
kingdom  is  not  of  this  world"  said  the  Nazarene  when 
questioned  as  to  a  possible  appeal  to  force  in  support  of  his 
doctrine.     "Put  up  thy  sword  again  into  his  place,"  he  said 


16 

to  an  overzealous  friend  who  would  openly  make  that 
appeal; — "all  they  that  take  the  sword  shall  perish  by  the 
sword."  And  again,  "Blessed  are  the  meek,  for  they  shall 
inherit  the  earth; "  and  "Love  your  enemies,  bless  them  that 
curse  you,  do  good  to  them  that  hate  you,  and  pray  for 
them  that  despitef ully  use  you  and  persecute  you ;  that  ye 
may  be  the  children  of  your  Father  which  is  in  heaven." 
Though  the  lesson  is  a  hard  one,  it  seemed  as  though  at  last 
the  followers  of  the  meek  and  lowly  Jesus  were  beginning 
to  take  it  to  heart.  The  church,  and  especially  its 
ministers,  it  was  felt,  w^ere  permanently  pledged  to  the 
cause  of  peace,  and  could  not  consistently  be  found  among 
those  who  clamor  for  vengeance  or  openly  fan  the  passions 
which  lead  to  war  and  bloodshed.  Yet  in  our  country, 
at  least,  all  this  seems  to  have  been  changed  within 
these  last  few  years.  I  fear  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
the  body  of  our  American  clergy  was  prompt  and  eager  to 
urge  on  this  nation  into  w^ar  with  Spain.  There  were,  of 
course,  many  and  noble  exceptions.  But  so  far  as  my 
observation  and  impressions  go,  that  minister  was  the 
exception  who  lifted  up  his  voice  in  protest;  and  that 
religious  paper  was  the  exception  which  did  not,  and  which 
does  not  now,  defend  it.  Was  it  a  wave  of  popular  enthusi- 
asm which  swept  them  from  their  moorings?  Was  it  specious 
sentiment?  Was  it  the  traditional  Puritanic  hatred  of  all 
things  Roman?  Or  shall  we  be  told  that  herein  is  no  real 
paradox  at  all?  I  know  not.  And  now  throughout  all  this 
dreadful  business  in  the  Philippines  and  this  more  dreadful 
business  in  China,  almost  the  only  voice  we  hear,  whether 
from  missionaries  in  the  field  or  from  their  supporters  here 
at  home,  is  the  constant  demand  for  more  force,  greater 
severity,  harder  conditions,  more  blood.  The  ease  is  one 
which  excites  wonderment  in  the  onlookers,  even  among 
those  who  are  glad  to  find  this  unlooked-for  support  in  their 
schemes  of  conquest.  But  are  the  gentleness  and  love  which 
Christ  preached  so  long  ago  now  antiquated,  and  are  fierce- 
ness and  vengeance  to  take  their  place!     Was  Mohammed 


17 

right  after  all?  I  cannot  undertake  to  answer  these  questions 
nor  to  explain  this  not  the  least  surprise  of  the  century- 
closing  year. 

Yet  while  the  tragic  and  somber  phase  of  this  tremendous 
drama  in  China  has  occupied  our  chief  attention,  its  exi- 
gencies have  brought  into  counterplay  a  movement  and 
tendenc}^  which  seems  to  me  prophetic  not  of  downfall  and 
doom,  but  of  hope — a  new  and  larger  hope  for  the  world. 
The  great  old-time  civilizations  were  all  separative,  divisive. 
Each  conceived  and  developed  in  practical  isolation  one, 
single  master-idea.  The  Hebrew  idea  of  righteousness,  the 
Greek  idea  of  intelligence  and  ordered  beauty,  the  Roman 
idea  of  social  organization  were  thus  separately  worked  out. 
It  required  the  whole  lifetime  of  a  great  race  or  nation,  and 
all  its  genius,  to  bring  one  of  these  ideas  to  such  clearness 
and  perfection  as  to  permit  of  its  being  passed  on  to  others, 
and  so  becoming  part  of  the  inheritance  of  the  ages.  Each 
civilization  developed  its  idea  as  far  as  it  could  be  developed 
alone.  Yet  each  idea  was  after  all  but  a  partial  one,  in 
itself  insufficient  for  the  basis  of  a  complete  and  lasting 
civilization.  Each  needed  the  support  and  help  of  all  the 
others  before  there  could  be  a  perfect  society.  Indeed,  it 
was  precisely  because  of  the  lack  of  complementary  and 
supporting  ideas  that  each  of  these  old  civilizations  was 
doomed  to  fade  away.  The  problem  of  the  ancient  world 
was  therefore  the  discovery  and  the  development  of  these 
master-ideas  singly.  The  problem  of  the  modern  world  is 
the  combination  and  adjustment  of  them  to  make  a  com- 
plete and  sufficient  basis  for  a  permanent  human  society. 

The  Roman  was  the  last  effective  civilization  of  the 
ancient  world — the  last  one  able  to  impress  its  idea  upon 
the  world  that  was  to  be.  And  its  idea,  the  idea  of  an 
effective  human  organization,  was  developed  in  such 
imposing  grandeur  that,  during  the  long  centuries  which 
followed  its  downfall,  that  idea  still  dominated  the  hearts 
and  thoughts  of  men.  The  efforts  of  the  Middle  Age  were 
for  the  most  part  pathetically  ineffective.     They  were  like 


18 

the  efforts  and  struggles  of  men  in  dreams.  But  the 
dreams  of  the  Middle  Age  were  true  to  its  own  nature  and 
character;  they  were  grandiose,  romantic.  And  at  the  heart 
of  them  all  was  the  Roman  universality — the  conception  of 
an  all-embracing  unity.  During  that  feverish  night  and 
troubled  dawn  the  Middle  Age  had  three  such  splendid 
visions.  And  though  they  came  sadly  short  of  realization 
in  actual  practice,  those  dreams  were  truly  prophetic,  and 
are  still  to  us  of  these  latter  days  the  hope  and  the  promise 
of  the  world.  The  first  was  the  dream  of  an  all-embracing 
unity  and  organization  of  spiritual  life — a  church  of  which 
every  man  born  into  the  world  should  be  a  member — the 
Holy  Catholic  Church.  Its  second  was  the  dream  of  a  world- 
embracing  civil  order  of  which  every  man  should  be  a 
citizen, — the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  And  the  third,  its 
dream  just  before  dawn,  and  so,  according  to  the  old  belief, 
destined  to  a  nearer  fulfillment,  was  the  dream  of  a  world- 
wide fraternity  of  the  sons  of  light — of  souls  whom  the 
truth  had  made  free — the  University.  The  conception  of 
the  University  was  that  of  a  State — a  civitas,  as  its  diplomas 
still  attest;  a  republic  not  of  this  world,  but  of  the  world  of 
ideas.  Its  local  institutions  were  to  be  but  chapters  of  a 
universal  society.  Its  members  were  to  be  really  free  as 
were  no  other  men.  By  virtue  of  their  common  language 
they  were  actually  free  from  the  heavy  curse  of  Babel.  By 
virtue  of  their  superior  illumination  which  should  make 
them  a  law  unto  themselves,  they  were  to  be  actually  free 
in  large  measure  from  the  trammels  of  the  civil  law,  made 
only  for  knaves  and  fools.  And,  best  of  all,  their  spirits 
were  to  be  free — free  to  think,  to  learn,  to  know. 

But  when  the  modern  day  at  last  broke,  organization 
and  civilization  had  to  begin  on  a  scale  much  smaller  than 
that  of  these  dreams.  For  many  centuries  the  nation  was 
to  be  the  largest  whole  with  which  human  effort  could  suc- 
cessfully grapple.  As  the  modern  nationalities  one  after 
another  emerged  from  chaos,  each  was  forced  to  work  out 
its  own  civilization  very  much  by  itself.     Each  had  to  make 


19 

its  own  adjustment  of  these  master-ideas  under  its  own 
peculiar  conditions,  and  in  accordance  with  its  own  peculiar 
genius  and  limitations.  And  nations  differ  not  merely  in 
natural  gifts  and  advantages,  but  in  age  and  in  experience 
as  well.  Germany,  Italy,  and  Japan  were  born  into  the 
family  within  our  remembrance.  Furthermore,  the  very 
virtues  of  nationality, — loyalty  and  patriotism, — operate  as 
barriers  to  sjTupathy  and  the  free  play  of  ideas  quite  as 
much  as  do  the  commercial  and  material  discriminations 
which  national  competition  imposes.  It  is  plain,  therefore, 
that  in  the  present — the  national — stage  of  civilization  there 
still  is,  and  must  be,  much  that  is  separative,  divisive, 
partial.  And  yet  in  spite  of  the  provinciality,  the  jealousy, 
the  Philistinism  of  our  modern  world,  one  feels  that  civil- 
ization, wherever  it  now  exists,  is  after  all  one,  and  not 
many  as  was  the  case  in  the  ancient  world.  And  there 
have  been  of  late  intimations  not  a  few  that  the  growth  of 
the  free  spirit  of  man  cannot  much  longer  be  kept  within 
the  limits  of  the  national  phase  of  organization.  Such  lim- 
itation was  indeed  necessary,  and  has  been  of  immense 
advantage  at  the  start.  The  nation  was  the  seed-bed,  the 
nursery;  but  the  field  is  the  world.  Beyond  the  nation  on 
every  side  stretches  humanity  itself ,  transcendent,  limitless. 
Civilization  can  never  be  complete  or  perfect  for  any  until 
all  are  partakers.  The  separate  seed-plants  must  grow  to 
touch  and  support  one  another,  must  cover  the  whole  earth 
with  their  shadow  before  the  golden  harvest  can  really 
ripen  or  be  gathered. 

This  it  was  toward  which  the  dumb  heart  of  the  Middle 
Age  so  strangely  yearned,  and  which  for  one  group  of  men 
it  so  nearly  realized  in  its  University.  This  it  is  which  for 
the  same  group  is  now  realized  in  the  almost  absolute  com- 
munity in  spirit  of  the  truly  cultured  and  learned  through- 
out the  world.  This  idea  was  the  vital  and  lasting  element 
in  that  profound  and  far-reaching  stir  of  human  life  which 
we  miscall  the  French  Revolution.  This  is  what  prompted 
the  wonderful  missionary  activity  of  the  century  just  closed. 


20 

This  it  is  which  in  recent  times  has  caused  a  constant 
enlargement  of  the  realm  of  international  law  and  of  inter- 
national activity  and  cooperation  of  all  sorts;  such  as  the 
federation  of  the  Australian  Colonies  just  consummated. 
This  is  bringing  about  the  gradual  dawn  of  a  world-con- 
sciousness and  a  world-conscience,  as  seen  in  the  Red  Cross 
Society  and  the  Peace  Conference  at  the  Hague.  But  not 
less  significant  and  impressive  than  these  was  the  prompt 
and  instinctive  rallying  of  all  the  great  powers  of  civiliza- 
tion as  one  man  to  meet  the  emergency  in  China.  That 
emergency  portended  no  appreciable  danger  to  those  great 
powers  as  separate  nations,  for  it  could  not  reach  them;  — 
much  less  a  danger  to  their  united  force.  But  the  Boxer 
movement,  by  its  determined  stand  against  intercourse  and 
against  ideas,  far  more  than  by  its  lawlessness  and  violence, 
was  a  menace  and  a  defiance  to  the  spirit  of  civilization 
itself.  This,  I  take  it,  was  the  real  issue,  and  this  the 
ground  of  that  unexampled  unanimity  of  impulse  which 
astonished  the  world.  The  true  significance  of  that  common 
impulse  is  not,  in  my  view,  altered  at  all  by  the  greed  and 
violence  on  the  part  of  civilized  nations  which  goaded  into 
frenzy  those  unhappy  people,  and  so  precipitated  the  event, 
nor  by  the  pillaging  and  wanton  cruelty  which  seem  to  have 
disgraced  the  military  operations,  nor  even  by  the  selfish- 
ness which  now  seems  certain  to  determine  the  immmediate 
outcome.  That  the  instinct  of  civilization  should  so  assert 
itself, — should,  though  for  one  brief  moment,  so  over- 
shadow national  jealousies  and  self-seeking, — is  indeed 
memorable,  prophetic. 

Such,  all  too  hastily  and  meagerly  set  forth,  are  some  of 
the  thoughts  which  come  surging  to  mind  as  one  turns  to 
gaze  upon  the  solemn  pomp  of  the  great  year  just  past,  and 
listens  to  its  trumpet-note  still  echoing  to  remind  us  that 
"the  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new."  It  is 
much  to  have  lived  through  such  a  year  with  heart  and  soul 
at  all  awake  to  its  true  import.  It  is  more  to  have  come,  as 
most   of   ray  readers   have   done,   to  such  a  year  as  the 


21 

climax  and  crown  of  a  long  procession  of  such  years  of 
ever- increasing  volume  and  power; — years  watched  with 
eager  interest  as  thej-^  swept  grandly  by,  and  still  vividly 
real  in  memory  and  imagination.  But  happiest  of  all  is  the 
lot  of  those  who,  having  looked  with  us  as  from  Mt.  Pisgah 
upon  the  promised  land,  are  also  privileged  to  enter  in  and 
possess  it.  The  Century  is  dead.  Long  live  the  Century! 
Be  it  for  us  longer  or  shorter,  from  memories  and  musings 
such  as  these  we  turn  with  new  courage  to  the  hope  set 
before  us — the  hope  of  a  new  world, 

"Clasp,  Angel  of  the  backward  look 

And  folded  wings  of  ashen  gray 

And  voice  of  echoes  far  away, 
The  brazen  covers  of  thy  book  ; 
The  weird  palimpsest  old  and  vast 
Wherein  thou  hid'st  the  spectral  past ; 
Where  closely  mingling  pale  and  glow 
The  characters  of  joy  or  woe ; 
The  monographs  of  outlived  years 
Or  smile-illumed  or  dim  with  tears. 
Even  while  I  look,  I  can  but  heed 

The  restless  sands'  incessant  fall. 
Importunate  hours  that  hours  suceed, 
Each  clamorous  with  its  own  sharp  need. 

And  duty  keeping  pace  with  all. 
Shut  down  and  clasp  the  heavy  lids ; 
I  hear  again  the  voice  that  bids 

The  dreamer  leave  his  dream  midway 
For  larger  hopes  and  graver  fears : 
Life  greatens  in  these  later  years, 

The  century's  aloe  flowers  to-day!" 


OK  THE  \ 

UNIVERS 

OF 


X 


CO 


g 


186638 


•■  V..-  ■•*•;.••  '-Ik.: 

r-\'s'^-  .''''■■ 


S'!^fe::>' 


'  J  .'"'''>.v?-i'-*iif* 

■■■■'V  ^^  ^ 


